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Volume 42(1) Spring/printemps 2016
Student Communication and Study Habits of First-year University Students in the Digital Era
Communication étudiante et habitudes d’étude des étudiants universitaires de première année à l’époque numérique
Eliana Gallardo-Echenique, Universidad Continental Mark Bullen, University of British Columbia Luis Marqués-Molías, Rovira i Virgili University
Abstract
This paper reports on research into the study habits of-university students, their use
digital technologies and how they communicate with each other and their professors. We
conclude that most students feel comfortable with digital technologies and that they use social
media for connecting and interacting with friends rather than for academic communication.
Students prefer face-to-face communication for both academic/school and social communication
and they prefer to learn by themselves, work independently and to study at home.
Résumé
Cet article présente la recherche sur les habitudes d’étude des étudiants universitaires,
leur usage des technologies numériques et leur façon de communiquer entre eux et avec leurs
professeurs. Nous concluons que la plupart des étudiants se sentent à l’aise avec les technologies
numériques et qu’ils utilisent les médias sociaux pour leurs liens et interactions avec leurs amis
plutôt que pour la communication scolaire. Les étudiants préfèrent les communications en
personne en ce qui a trait aux communications scolaires et sociales et préfèrent apprendre par
eux-mêmes, travailler de manière autonome et étudier à la maison.
Introduction
We live in a digital era that presents challenges for education systems but also offers new
opportunities for teaching, learning and pedagogy (Battro & Fischer, 2012). The digital era is a
term that is ever more associated with digital technologies such as fast computers, multimedia
environments, and devices that can process and present information in real time and at high
CJLT/RCAT Vol. 42(1)
Student communication and study habits of first-year university students in the digital era 2
speed (Eshet-Alkalai, 2004; Shepherd, 2004). Digital technology means either: (a) digital
information (text, images, audio, video, etc...) stored on a computer and other electronic device;
or (b) digital devices such as a smartphone, laptop, camera, etc... (New Zealand Ministry of
Education, 2015).
The growth in the use of digital technologies, especially the Internet, is having a
significant impact on society and on many aspects of daily life (Acilar, 2011; Jelfs &
Richardson, 2012). The Internet has the potential to change the ways that people learn and
communicate; it allows them to stay in touch with family and friends and, in many cases, extend
their social networks; it permits easy access to a vast amount of information; it enables fast
synchronous as well as asynchronous communication; and it offers a wide array of entertainment
possibilities (Bargh & McKenna, 2004; Battro & Fischer, 2012; Jelfs & Richardson, 2012).
In most developed countries, teenagers use digital technology intensively, especially the
Internet for school, work and leisure (Gallardo-Echenique, Marqués-Molías, Bullen & Strijbos,
2015; Kolikant, 2010). These young people are arriving at universities and colleges having
grown up in a world in which digital technology was central to their social lives, and in many
cases, was used to support their studies (Jones & Healing, 2010; Simoneaux & Stroud, 2010).
However, the same cannot be said for many developing countries where access to digital
technologies is much more limited (Acilar, 2011; Hilbert, 2011; Miah & Omar, 2012).
Higher education institutions are attempting to harness the potential of digital
technologies to enhance and transform education (Battro & Fischer, 2012). For example, most
universities and colleges use learning management systems and web-based applications to
deliver both the curriculum and student support (Hawkins & Rudy, 2008; Browne et al., 2010;
Jelfs & Richardson, 2012). “Students arrive at university already schooled in a variety of
practices related to learning and technology” (Jones & Healing, 2010, p. 344) and “are heavily
immersed in Web 2.0 technologies (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, podcasts, wikis, blogs, virtual
worlds, video sharing and photo sharing)” (Bicen & Cavus, 2011, p. 943).
New and emerging digital technologies, particularly social media, offer the potential to
transform classrooms into more engaging, collaborative and productive learning environments in
which learning can be customized to student’s specific needs, interests and learning preferences.
The range and variety of digital technologies and practices adopted by young learners are
potentially important for enhancing our understanding of ways in which they may be
appropriated to support technology-mediated learning in schools (Luckin, et al., 2009).
Information services like Google Search, Google Scholar, GPS-enabled devices, e-books, online
serials, and Open Educational Resources, are improving access and communication for learners
(Lea & Jones, 2011; Siemens & Mateos, 2010; Van Harmelen & Randall, 2011). In recent years,
the increase in computing and networking power has also enabled smartphones to provide users
with a more user-friendly integration of Internet access and online digital resources, (e.g., text,
images and audio/video streams) (Chen, Wei, Huang & Kinshuk, 2012).
Study Habits and Student Communication
Research into student study habits has been approached from various angles and from a
variety of disciplinary backgrounds. In recent years there has been a focus on student study
CJLT/RCAT Vol. 42(1)
Student communication and study habits of first-year university students in the digital era 3
habits and the use of ICTs (Abdul Karim & Hasan, 2007; Gutnick, Robb, Takeuchi & Kotler,
2010). Research on study habits and how student communication among university students has
gained as much attention in recent years due to the impact of digital media made available
through the Internet and multimedia resources (Abdul Karim & Hasan, 2007; Igun & Adogbeji,
2007). To Crede and Kuncel (2008, p. 427), “study habits typically denotes the degree to which
the student engages in regular acts of studying that are characterized by appropriate studying
routines (e.g., reviews of material) occurring in an environment that is conducive to studying”.
Young people’s use of technology to communicate with one another is nothing new;
however, what has changed is the form that communication takes, for example, text-based
technologies are picking up where phones left off (Bryant, Sanders-Jackson & Smallwood,
2006). Students use the Internet, text messaging, and social networking, but they are using these
technologies primarily for social and entertainment purposes. According to Gibbons (2007), they
communicate differently (e.g., text messaging and instant message), use a different written
language (e.g., text messaging), interact and socialize differently (e.g., via avatars in online
games and Facebook), and have a different sense of authorship (e.g., Flickr and personal blogs).
University students are often forerunners in the adoption of new communication
technologies, and most recently, the popularization of online social networking sites (SNS) has
changed this landscape even further (Quan-Haase, 2007; Lewis, Kaufman & Christakis, 2008;
Junco, 2012). Since their introduction in the past decade, SNS such as MySpace, Orkut,
Facebook, Friendster, Cyworld, and Bebo, have attracted millions of users (Ellison, Steinfield &
Lampe, 2007; Boyd & Ellison, 2008; Greenhow & Robelia, 2009; Peluchette & Karl, 2010;
Dubrofsky, 2011) and are gaining rapid popularity, especially amongst groups of young people
(Littlejohn, Margaryan & Vojt, 2010).
Research Design
This study is part of a larger international research project, “Digital Learners in Higher
Education” (http://digitallearners.ca) that is investigating how postsecondary learners in different
institutional contexts and cultures think about digital technologies and how they use them in their
social and educational lives. Data has been collected from four post-secondary institutions in
Canada and Spain for this project: the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT), the
University of Regina, Rovira i Virgili University (URV) and the Open University of Catalonia
(UOC) (for more information see Bullen, Belfer, Morgan & Qayyum, 2009; Bullen, Morgan,
Qayyum, & 2011; Romero, Guitert, Sangrà & Bullen, 2013).
Aim of the Paper
This paper reports on research into the study and communication habits and preferences
of first year university students and how digital technologies are used to support these activities.
The research question driving this study is: “what impact does students’ social use of digital
technologies have on postsecondary learning environments?”
Methodology
An interpretivist methodology was used to guide our research to understand values,
beliefs, and meanings of social phenomena in order to arrive at a casual explanation of its course
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Student communication and study habits of first-year university students in the digital era 4
and effects (Bryman & Bell, 2003; Kim, 2003). Our research was conducted in the Faculty of
Educational Sciences and Psychology of the Rovira i Virgili University (URV), a multi-campus
system located in the Catalonian region of Spain. URV consists of 12 faculties and schools in
which over 1500 lecturers and researchers provide degrees to 11600 undergraduates, 1842
master’s-degree and 1032 doctoral students, who attend courses in all knowledge areas: the
sciences, health sciences, social and legal sciences, engineering and architecture, arts and
humanities, all adapted to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) (URV, 2013).
The survey instrument employed was a 78 item online questionnaire adapted from the
Survey of Student Communication & Study Habits that was developed by Bullen, Morgan,
Belfer and Qayyum (2008). The purpose of the questionnaire was to gain insights into how first-
year university students communicate and their general study habits. The questionnaire was
translated to Spanish by experts from the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) (see Romero et
al., 2013).
The reliability of all items used was checked with Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. The
reliability analysis results were an alpha of 0.924, which demonstrates a high level of agreement
between participants (see Table 1).
Table 1
Reliability
Scale N° of items Alpha coefficient
Who do you turn to for help with your courses? 17 0.845
How and where do you communicate with peers and
professors?
26 0.880
Your study and communication habits with
classmates and professors
31 0.891
All items 78 0.924
This instrument was distributed by email and through the institutional learning
management system in February to April 2012. Students were asked to volunteer to do the online
survey anonymously and filled out the questionnaire; all participants were informed of the nature
of the survey and of their voluntary and confidential participation. The average completion time
of the survey was approximately 20 minutes.
The survey was distributed to all first-year students (457 students) of the Department of
Pedagogy of the degrees of Pedagogy, Social education, Early education and Primary education
and 204 students answered the questionnaires (see Table 2). For the purpose of the study,
homogeneous and convenience samples were used; settings, groups and/or individuals were
chosen based on similar or specific characteristics (homogeneous) and were available and willing
to participate in the study (convenience) (Collins Onwuegbuzie & Jiao, 2006).
CJLT/RCAT Vol. 42(1)
Student communication and study habits of first-year university students in the digital era 5
Table 2
Population and Sampling
Programs Campus
Tarragona Tortosa El Vendrell
U S U S U S
Early education 122 62 40 15 40 9
Primary Education 120 71 40 7 0 1
Social Education 53 22 0 0 0 0
Pedagogy 42 17 0 0 0 0
Totals 337 172 80 22 40 10
Note. Universe (U); Sampling (S). Universe 457 students; Sampling 204 students.
Results
The results are hereby presented in descriptive statistics and thematic narrative form. We
use descriptive statistical technique to calculate the frequencies, means and standard deviations
of the collected data.
Respondents were all first-year students of the pedagogy (8.3%), social education
(10.8%), early education (42.2%) and primary education (38.7) programs. The majority were
between the ages of 19 (35.8%) – 20 (12.3%) and 86.8% were females. To find out about how
many hours students “spent studying or working on class projects” (Table 1), we asked the
question in three contexts: hours of classes attend per week (Mean=16.07), hours on campus
each week (Mean=22.43) and hours of work at a job each week (Mean=7.57).
CJLT/RCAT Vol. 42(1)
Student communication and study habits of first-year university students in the digital era 6
6%
57%
30%
18%
77%
2%
52%
1%
46%
1%
24%
34%
39%
9%
29%
12%
15%
32%
27%
9%
20%
19%
4%
43%
14%
45%
8%
64%
1%
7%
15%
1%
18%
13%
30%
8%
8%
9%
9%
9%
9%
8%
9%
9%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
a. Talk to a professor
b. Talk to a classmate
c. Talk to a tutor, coordinator, etc.
d. Talk to others students not in the program
e. Talk to another person
f. Go to URV support centre
g. Search online
h. Talk to a work colleague
i. Try to address it on my own
Never Seldom Often Always Missing values
Figure 1. What students do when they have a doubt about their courses’ content.
Students were asked to indicate on a four-point scale ranging from never (1) to always (4)
their views about what they do when they have a doubt about their courses’ content (see Figure
1). According to their responses, students seldom talk to a professor (also includes lecturer,
assistant and associate professor). Most students are reluctant to: a) talk to a tutor, coordinator, b)
to talk to others students not in the program, and c) to go to the institutional support centre.
Almost all respondents prefer to search online. Over half of the students prefer personal
communication with their classmates and never talk to a work colleague, and a majority of them
try to deal with their questions on their own.
25%
1%
2%
66%
15%
92%
8%
92%
3%
87%
70%
94%
8%
88%
5%
34%
13%
13%
16%
16%
3%
21%
2%
4%
7%
14%
4%
28%
6%
3%
13%
21%
30%
28%
10%
25%
1%
32%
1%
12%
6%
31%
2%
20%
34%
11%
53%
48%
5%
34%
1%
30%
2%
71%
3%
1%
24%
1%
66%
45%
9%
3%
9%
3%
10%
3%
9%
3%
10%
3%
9%
2%
9%
3%
11%
3%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Classmates
Professors
Classmates
Professors
Classmates
Professors
Classmates
Professors
Classmates
Professors
Classmates
Professors
Classmates
Professors
Classmates
Professors
UR
V e
ma
ilP
ers
on
al
em
ail
IMS
MS
Fa
ce
bo
ok/
MyS
pace
Vid
eo
con
fere
nce
Ph
on
eIn
pe
rson
Never Seldom Often Always Missing values
Figure 2. Students’ communication preferences with classmates and professors.
Students were asked to indicate on a four-point scale how often they used each
technology (email, instant messaging, text message, social networks, videoconference, and
mobile phone) to communicate with classmates and professors about courses (see Figure 2).
According to the findings, the vast majority of students still prefer face-to-face discussions with
classmates (86%) and professors (79%). To communicate with their professors, three-quarters of
students prefer institutional email. Students prefer personal email to communicate with
classmates, while the second favourite option is text-messaging (or short-message-service/SMS)
via mobile phone and the third one is instant messaging (or Internet Messaging/IM) over the
Internet.
In regards to the use of IM, the vast majority of students report they do not use it to
communicate with professors. In addition, some students mentioned “WhatsApp” (a real-time
cross-platform mobile messaging system, which allows users to send messages for free, as long
as they have a smartphone and data connection) as their preferred application for communicating
with classmates. Over half (55.4%) of the students prefer to communicate with their classmates
via phone, but the vast majority (87.7%) never communicate with their professors this way.
Three-quarters of the students use Facebook or MySpace to communicate with classmates; the
majority never use it to communicate with professors. Videoconferencing is also never used to
communicate with professors (93.6%). Nearly three-quarters of students report never using
videoconferencing systems (e.g., Skype, traditional conference calls or some other platform) to
communicate with classmates.
51%
3.4%
16.2%
3.4%
82.4%
59.8%
28.4%
26%
36.8%
15.7%
9.3%
30.4%
15.2%
43.1%
34.8%
4.9%
7.4%
3.4%
26%
10.8%
78.9%
0.5%
1%
2%
1.5%
1.5%
2%
2.9%
1.5%
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
a. In a lab, workshop or studio
b. In the library
c. In social spaces
d. At home
e. At work
f. In transit
Never Seldom Often Always Missing values
Figure 3. How often students study/work on assignments in different places outside of regular
class time.
Students were also asked to indicate how often they study or work on assignments in
different places outside of regular class time (see Figure 3). According to their responses, time
spent studying outside the classroom is usually at home, often in the library, seldom in social
spaces around campus (e.g. auditorium, cafeterias), never in a lab, workshop, studio, at work or
in transit (e.g., bus, train).
CJLT/RCAT Vol. 42(1)
Student communication and study habits of first-year university students in the digital era 9
4%
14%
8%
2%
8%
25%
35%
40%
20%
30%
39%
31%
30%
34%
42%
28%
15%
18%
40%
16%
4%
5%
4%
4%
4%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
a. Work on my own
b. Study with friends
c. Learn for myself
d. Get clear instructions
e. Several different tasks at the same time
Strongly disagree Disagree Agree Strongly agree Missing values
Figure 4. Study habits of university students.
Less than a quarter of students prefer to work on assignments on their own when doing
schoolwork (see Figure 4). Around half of students prefer to learn by themselves and welcome
the opportunity to study with friends. They are used to doing several different tasks at the same
time. Almost three-quarters of students prefer clear instructions before trying something new.
Data relating to relationship with peers (see Figure 5), shows that 84.3% of respondents trust
other students in this program; 92.6% can rely on classmates to help them, 75% can rely on
classmates to respond course questions within a few hours, and 64.7% enjoy discussing their
ideas about course content with other students. Most students also feel like they are always
connected to friends because of technologies such as cell phones and the Internet.
2%
1%
1%
4%
1%
10%
4%
20%
28%
8%
40%
38%
42%
42%
24%
45%
54%
33%
23%
64%
3%
3%
4%
3%
3%
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
a. Trust other students
b. Rely on classmates to help me
c. Rely on classmates to respondquestions
d. Enjoy discussing ideas with otherstudents
e. Connected to friends because oftechnologies
Strongly disagree Disagree Agree Strongly agree Missing values
Figure 5. Student’s relationship with peers.
For the question “when do students usually study or work on course assignments”, a total
of 602 responses were collected from 196 respondents. The most common response was “on
weekends” (23.3%) followed by “in the evenings” (20.9%) and “in the afternoon” (20.4%).
CJLT/RCAT Vol. 42(1)
Student communication and study habits of first-year university students in the digital era 10
When asked about their personal interests, 94.2% of students were comfortable with digital
technologies and 89.7% had very clear goals in life. Most students indicated they enjoyed:
talking about themselves to people (97.1%), reading (69.6%), and meeting new people (94.6%).
Some students (58.3%) got involved in projects and activities that have an impact in society.
Discussion
Our research shows that students at this university are using tools in a variety of different
ways (face-to-face interaction, email, Facebook/MySpace, mobile cellphone, instant messaging
and text messaging) to communicate with peers and professors. A majority of the surveyed
students prefer face-to-face conversation with both professors and peers above any other form of
communication. Qayyum (2010) found that students felt that talking in person was a quicker and
more effective channel of communicating with professors for course-related issues than using
ICTs. Face-to-face communication remains important for general communication, despite the
development of much less expensive and more flexible electronic ways of communicating
(Winger, 2005). Face-to-face is considered the richest medium for conveying meaning and it
supports all the different types of communication cues, such as verbal (e.g. spoken), paraverbal
(e.g. intonation, voice), and non-verbal signals (e.g. body language, gestures and facial
expressions) (Kira, Nichols & Apperley, 2009; Van der Meijden & Veenman, 2003; Winger,
2005).
Another mode of communication that students prefer is institutional email, which they
use with faculty advising them to set academic goals. To Bulut and Rabab’ah (2007) “the nature,
goal and frequency of it may depend on various factors such as the teaching traditions,
technological facilities and specific-course requirements” (p. 50). According to Biesenbach-
Lucas (2007), the academic purposes for which students use email with their professors are:
“getting information/advice about course materials and quizzes, addressing late work and missed
classes, challenging grades, showing interest in and understanding of course material…” (p. 61).
According to Bullen et al. (2011), students use email with professors in situations that demand
more formality, or where it was desirable to maintain a certain distance. In principle, faculty
expect students to have the ability to write email messages characterized by features that reflect
greater formality (e.g., politeness, carefully editing, good grammatical content without lack of
punctuation) (Biesenbach-Lucas, 2007; Duthler, 2006). This is consistent with the findings of Li,
Finley, Pitts and Guo (2010), who observed that actual communication between faculty and their
students is “largely limited to formal and structured situations such as classroom lectures” (p. 4).
The social distance dimension can refer to the degree of familiarity and frequency of interaction
between the student and the professor (Biesenbach-Lucas, 2007; Duthler, 2006).
To Roussel, Elliot, & Feltman (2011), help-seeking “combines aspects of academic and
social engagement, as it is both a learning strategy and a form of social interaction” (p. 395). Our
results suggest that learners are seeking help from formal and informal resources (searching
online, talking to a classmate, and trying to address it by themselves). According to Qayyum
(2010), possible reasons could be program design, trust of peers, the quality of students’
relationship with instructors, the course content/knowledge domain, course design and existing
institutional supports. It is unclear why they are seeking help more from classmates than other
sources, but institutions and educators need to acknowledge that students are using informal
help-seeking options more than formal/institutional channels (Qayyum, 2010).
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Student communication and study habits of first-year university students in the digital era 11
Students are comfortable with digital technologies and using technology for
communication as part of their lifestyle. A possible reason for this could be that “the free and
readily available Internet access around the university campus makes university students the
heaviest users of the Internet and other web-based applications” (Neo & Skoric, 2009, p. 628).
The Internet tools most used by the students to communicate with classmates are Facebook and
MySpace, followed by personal email. Results also indicate that students do not use Facebook
and MySpace to communicate with professors. Hilton III & Plummer (2012) found that
professors are reluctant to use these social networking sites to communicate with students
because they consider that an entry into the social world of their students, which may undermine
their credibility as qualified professors.
Besides Facebook, MySpace and personal email, students use SMS and IM to connect to
peers. They can have private one-to-one real-time conversations and, one-to-many conversations,
satisfying two major needs: forming and maintaining individual friendships, and belonging to
peer groups (Boneva, Quinn, Kraut, Kiesler & Shklovski, 2006; Neo & Skoric 2009). According
to Leung (2007), students are motivated to use SMS because of “its convenience, its low cost,
and its utility for coordinating events” (p. 115). By offering fast-paced, inexpensive, online
communication, texting provides individuals the opportunity to remain connected to their social
network from virtually any place or situation where this technology is supported (Bryant,
Sanders-Jackson & Smallwood, 2006; Skierkowski & Wood, 2012).
The university uses Adobe Connect as its institutional videoconferencing system, and it is
used for teaching activities in undergraduate and postgraduate courses, and to provide richer
visual support for students. However, use of audio/video conferencing systems is not common
between the students because it is an institutional service available only to professors. Students'
learning is influenced positively when faculty are comfortable with presenting via
videoconferencing, with their course material, and with using appropriate technology in class
(MacIntosh, 2001; Tipton, Pulliam, Allen & Sherwood, 2011). This does take some practice
because it requires the faculty to divide attention among teaching the class, responding to
students' questions or needs, and operating the videoconferencing equipment (Tipton et al.,
2011). To Hedestig and Kaptelinin (2002), “successful teaching and learning in a
videoconference setting is found to be associated with special types of arrangements and
expertise” (p. 179). For example, the technical issues that could occur during a
videoconferencing would demand the expertise of a videoconference facilitator/coordinator/
professor.
According to Košir, Sočan and Pečjak (2008), the two most frequent and important forms
of social relations that students form and maintain are to peers and to teachers. Our data show
that the majority of students “trust other students”, “can rely on classmates” and “enjoy
discussing their ideas with other students”. Trusting each other is one of the most important
constituents of a society because trust helps facilitate smooth interactions between individuals,
groups, and organizations (Bilgic & Gumuseli, 2012; Lount & Pettit, 2012). In education, high
levels of trust among classmates contribute positively to promoting social action and
relationships (Bilgic & Gumuseli, 2012; Farini, 2012). According to Qayyum, trust has three
main dimensions “affective; perceived utility; and reliability” (2010, p. 70). The “affective”
dimension is evidenced in the level of emotional comfort students feel about communicating
with classmates. According to Qayyum (2010) how students communicate with classmates also
CJLT/RCAT Vol. 42(1)
Student communication and study habits of first-year university students in the digital era 12
depends on whether they trust their classmates. The “utility” dimension is shown when students
have confidence working with peers because: (a) it helps them with their course content (b) they
do high-quality work, (c) it keeps them motivated and (d) they feel that they save time. The
“reliability” dimension is evidenced in terms of time, when students trust their classmates can
provide a quick response when needed.
Conclusions
Despite the popularity of digital technology, the results of this study show that students
prefer face-to-face communication over all other methods for both academic and social
communication. Most of the students feel comfortable with digital technologies and they see
Facebook and MySpace as more about connecting and interacting with friends than academic
communication. Using technology for communication is part of students’ lifestyles, and the
results show that if they are going to use technology, they prefer synchronous communication.
While email, instant messaging, text messaging, Facebook and MySpace are part of their daily
routine, videoconferencing use (e.g., Skype, traditional conference calls or some other platform)
is less frequent. Face-to-face interaction, Facebook, MySpace, personal email, text message and
mobile cellphones were the preferred modes of communicating and connecting with others.
The findings also indicate that students used publically available ICT applications far
more than they used the university-supported applications for communicating with classmates.
Students are using applications that they use in their everyday life, beyond their role as a student.
IM and SMS, which are technically asynchronous, but can facilitate the immediate back and
forth of real-time communication, play central roles as well. Connectivity with professors via
other asynchronous communication methods such as texting, instant messaging, Facebook and
MySpace are much lower than with classmates.
Students prefer to learn by themselves, work independently and to study at home. This
finding is in contrast to the prevailing “net generation” discourse which suggests students prefer
collaborative approaches (Prensky, 2010). Most students in this study are comfortable using
computers, the Internet and other ICT for a variety of purposes; and they are used to performing
various tasks simultaneously. Whether they are able to perform these simultaneous tasks
effectively was beyond the scope of this study.
The results of this study are consistent with findings in the UK (Benfield, Ramanau &
Sharpe, 2009; Conole, de Laat, Dillon & Darby, 2006; Lea & Jones, 2011; Luckin, Clark,
Graber, et al. 2009; Margaryan, Littlejohn & Vojt, 2011), Australia (Kennedy, et al., 2008),
Canada (Bullen et al., 2008, 2009, 2011; Qayyum, 2010), South Africa (Czerniewicz, Williams
& Brown, 2009) and Spain (Romero, et al., 2013).
Implications for Practice and Policy
One major implication of this study is that educators and institutions need to consider
ways to help foster and support informal channels of student communication. For example, it
would be useful to learn what factors affect students’ decision to seek help through informal
channels and if formal/informal help-seeking is improving student achievement (Qayyum, 2010).
In regard to digital technology, the authors consider that it is essential to design good instruction
CJLT/RCAT Vol. 42(1)
Student communication and study habits of first-year university students in the digital era 13
based on the students' learning needs by using technologies that are program-relevant (Bullen &
Morgan, 2011.
Limitations and Future Study
This study faces some limitations. First, it assumes that the participants provided honest
answers, and were able to provide meaningful insights into their own habits. Second, this study
assesses a specific group of first-year students within a specific discipline (education), attending
a public university. This homogenous and convenience sample is therefore only generalizable to
those with the same traits. These findings may not generalize to other students, especially those
who are not college-bound, or to university students at different types of institutions. Third, this
study’s reliance on quantitative data alone limits development of an in-depth understanding of
students’ reasons and motivations underpinning digital technology use. Acknowledging this, the
authors are aware of the limitations of this study in making any definitive conclusions. This
study was a first attempt to address these issues and a vast amount of work remains to be done in
this area.
Acknowledgements:
The authors would like to thank the students who voluntarily took the time to participate
in this study. Thanks to staff in the Applied Research Group in Education and Technology
(ARGET) for all their help.
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Authors
Eliana Gallardo-Echenique has a doctorate in Educational Technologies from Rovira i Virgili
University. She is the head of the Digital Contents Division at Universidad Continental (Peru).
She was a consultant in educational technology at the Ministry of Education of Peru and has
been involved in the design and implementation of several research projects and programmes.
Email: [email protected]
Mark Bullen has a doctorate in Adult Education from the University of British Columbia (UBC).
He is an adjunct Professor in the UBC Master of Educational Technology program. Over the past
thirty years, he has worked in the fields of distance education and educational technology, and as
a consultant for educational organizations worldwide. Email: [email protected]
Luis Marqués-Molías has a doctorate in Physical Activities and Sports Science from the
University of Zaragoza. He is the academic director of the Early Education and Primary
Education at Rovira i Virgili University (Spain). He is a member of the research ARGET group
(Applied Research in Education and Technology Group) (ref. 2009SGR596). Email:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
